I thought this was satire when I clicked on it. The more I read it got progressively worse as I realized how long it took to even mention prion disease. This article doesn't really seem reviewed which seems to be a trend I'm noticing in Atlas Obscura articles. Is anyone else thinking this?
Edit: The person who wrote this article has no background at all in Food Safety, nor should they really be talking about this subject so lightly. Honestly, this article is dangerous to even really promote in the way its written. They lightly jester at that idea that a 1% fatality rate is an extremely rare occurrence and suggests that brains should be consumed in higher amounts. At first I thought this was satire but this advice is just genuinely harmful.
Reading this article I find it hard to believe an editor is involved in the process at Atlas Obscura. There have been several articles like this posted even ones that are completely fictional accounts on the website. The way this article is written it intentionally downplays real dangers of prion disease in an attempt to defend its consumption. This isn't something a magazine should be doing in the first place. I don't know what the review process there is but it's clear it doesn't seem to exist.
I don't think that this was reviewed by anyone. It seems like it's just a like thing he posts himself. Looking at his youtube videos it seems he's doing this as a side hustle. Typical click bait videos with little to no real weight to them. It's disappointing to see but it's pretty normal on youtube. You'll find people speculating on the most insane things like the entire downfall of nations because of X event. This sort of just looks like an extension of that.
This doesn't really factor a lot of things. It's a bit too simplified in my opinion. There's nothing here about costs involved, labor, and technological shift which frankly, isn't really possible for a lot of countries. A part of me doesn't really trust this post as there isn't really much it cites as its source. If I saw the graph he was showing at a glance I really wouldn't believe what he was saying unless he could back it up with the data, which he doesn't do.
Researchers also found that Black and Hispanic families lost a higher percentage of their wages than white families. By 2019, health care premiums as percentage of compensation were 18.5% for Asian families, 19.2% for Black families, and 19.8% for Hispanic families, compared to 13.8% for white families.
Lower-wage workers are also hit hard by this disparity. In 2019, health care premiums as percentage of compensation represented 28.5% of compensation for families in the 20th percentile of earnings, compared with only 3.9% for families in the 95th percentile.
Maybe not the one you want to skip the article for. On another note Asian Americans are skinnier than White Americans even adjusted for on BMI so obesity is ruled out.
Hmm... 2006, huh. I wonder what happened then for it to change. Well tax evasion has always been the main game with these foundations. But it's a strange statement from earlier about the disbursement of funds through the Gates Foundation. There are claims here against Dynastic wealth yet similarly to the Emerson Collective these claims seem hard to substantiate or just tax write off donations to his children. Though it is important to note that Buffet has given $50 billion of his own wealth to charitable causes.
Personally, I don't like to think of this as some conspiracy or oligarchic cause. In many ways it could be the billions his children are inheriting seems like a lot because it is. Though, mind you, they are in their 70s. Some are obese, the likelihood of living past a certain age is also hard to factor, but not impossible. Most people like to see their children at least live a good life, it's hard to blame them for it. But at what amount does this become questionable? These are all questions people ask and have asked over the decades.
This generation of billionaires have not been born into extreme levels of wealth. Though many have asked what would happen if this were to continue. In Korea generational wealth has existed through various families known as the Chaebols the word itself is a loan word for Japanese known as Zaibatsu. Extreme levels of income inequality in Korea and an economy controlled by a few powerful mega-corporations whose families made connections to one another through marriage.
Well, it's impossible to tell what the future holds for these children. But for the average Korean citizen they have become indentured servants. A broken social structure and a ladder that for many is impossible to climb. I guess it's enough with the anecdotes. And even if it got better should a family or a handful of families control an entire countries economy? I don't think so.
I do wonder though, can a family spend even a billion dollars in their lifetime? It seems unrealistic to think of that way. And why should any family even have control of such level of wealth. In their lifespan have they done anything to deserve this amount? It seems impossible to think of, much less inheriting it.
It can seem appealing to people to be a billionaire or to have an immense amount of wealth, but it's not. It's an isolating life and an even smaller social circle. Most of no friends and it can be almost impossible to build relationships with others even in these circles. But who knows maybe they've never experienced this before. But I've met with aging billionaires before and their children. Their life stories are just kind of depressing. For a lot of them their money is the only tangible thing they have and that's not really a healthy thing.
The wealth will be controlled by someone. Socialism has showed that in most cases it devolves into totalitarianism (Russia, Venezuela, China, etc). Then you have all the wealth controlled by just one person. At least in capitalism it is spread across thousands or tens of thousands of families, and there is a mechanism for removing it from foolish families (capitalism again then bankruptcy).
"Hmm... 2006, huh. I wonder what happened then for it to change. "
Well he remarried in 2006 having been widowed two years earlier. Neither he nor his friends were getting any younger. So it all sounds pretty unremarkable.
Well I can't edit this and this page has likely been archived so... I'll just write this. Sam was essentially homeless. A failed startup with not much to it. Sure, it was acquired but it gave him essentially just enough to continue trying to pursue his dream. He really didn't make any progress at all. At YCombinator he was essentially stuck for years. There's a lot of fake and editorialized stories about his life and his made up genius. The dude dropped out of college it's not this amazing story. Mentally he had given up everything to try to reach this stage. I don't know the full story but almost everything online I've read is completely different from what I've actually heard.
Huh, looking at the other nominees a part of me wonders if it was created by someone else and they just had a child stand in to take the credit. This is incredibly suspicious to say the least but who knows. There's nothing wrong with a parent or someone else helping them but to the extent of this...
Thank you for direct links to these. Winner is obviously much outlierier than these other two "mere mortal" young animators.
Mentally daydreaming, my thoughts flash back to 2002 — back when a simple 16-color, ten second animation (done by a peer at our elite creative arts HS) took days to render [PowerMacG4MDD Rage128 FTW!] and secured this peer artist acclaim from his classsmates, state, and future creative employers.
How far we've come. To where we'll go. Just incredible — can't imagine what the next decades will allow, but looking forward to robotic dumplings/streetfood.
You could be right; I'd hope the competition vetted the entries. But 16 isn't really a child. There's a lot of variation, but there are a lot of very talented people that age or even younger.
Honestly at 16 even if a child reached this skill level it means they typically sacrificed other aspects of there life to reach it. Realistically less than 0.1% of children reach this route and from I've seen it's due to "encouragement" by their parents. I've seen a wide range of people children who had have "gone" far. Kids who finished their PhDs by the age of 16. It's almost always child abuse. There parents don't necessarily hit them. But they "encourage" them by forcing them down a path because it's "good" for them. If you're thinking of going this route, don't. The professors I've talked to kind of just see this as abuse and they will not help these children.
No I'm not endorsing anything like that. I'm thinking of the kid who picks up a guitar or sits at a piano at age 12 or 13 and falls in love with it, and is an amazing player by age of 16. It's an inner talent and passion that is unlocked, not a skill that was learned by force.
None of the people I've described have been forced to learn these skills. Well, not in the practical sense. Here is an example. You an born in a Tibetan Monastery in front of you is a set of items, the items that you pick are the ones that you will follow for the rest of your life. A child in this scenario is never forced into an option. Instead, the option just does not exist. From birth you are encourages and taught about the wonders of a skill that you will learn for the rest of you life. Of course you aren't being forced. But wouldn't it be fun if you could learn just a bit more? Oh friends? What friends? The people that the departments I've had the opportunity to interact with deal with these kinds of people. These children are never forced explicitly. It can have later in life too. 12 or 13 this is around the age for many sports and athletes. It's not a talent or passion, what you think exists doesn't.
It's a skinners box. People will put money in for the dopamine rush it gives. Think candy crush or vampire stories. They're paying for an experience. In a sense the people spending money are victims of predatory gaming mechanics.
If you've payed for anything in any video game to enhance your experience like getting an upgraded weapon it's the same exact thing. Turns out there's an audience that's willing to pay this money. Or it's a money laundering scheme but who really knows.
I genuinely thought this was satire when I clicked on it. Honestly the -punk genre itself to me doesn't really make any sense. There is little to no real connection between punk genres with the notable exception of Cyberpunk and Biopunk and even those don't necessarily have much in common.
Personally I think it's great to see more american culture in novels but I feel like this is a stretch. It requires too much information for a writer to have knowledge of. There's a lot of faults and issues with modern day writing and the publishing industry as whole. But I just think it's getting ridiculous that we're expecting new and upcoming writers to be able to do all of these things in order to fit into possible niche genres that generate little to no profit. Honestly, a part of me is concerned this is a way for publishing companies to silo young and upcoming ethnic writers. I think it's great that we're trying to be more inclusionary but I don't think this is the way to do it.
I mentally replace "-punk" with "-schtick" and it makes sense. Steam-punk? Steam-schtick, everything is steam powered. Cyber-shtick, usually a bitter critique of consumer culture, with a protagonist that's heavily invested in the internet. Meso-shtick, they put a light veneer of classical Aztec culture on what is basically a detective novel in space.
It's interesting that it's almost 'punk' to be anti-punk - anti-inclusionary, etc. People always have reasons, but I think we recognize the form, tone, and conclusions of so many of these arguments.
> it's almost 'punk' to be anti-punk - anti-inclusionary, etc.
I see the most dull, buttoned-up conservatives claim this, but I think they're lying or delusional. Major hegemonic institutions have capitulated only superficially to the trappings and the suits of "punk," or liberalism, and certainly not in the slightest to the threads of Marxism/Socialism that demand a dictatorship of the proletariat, ie worker ownership, ie DIY.
The argument that conservatism is "punk," delusional as it is, is less based on any superficial capitulation to leftism but the premise that the mainstream power base of modern society (particularly American society) is leftist |"wokeist"|feminist|anti-white|anti-Christian, what have you, which they claim places them in the position of underdog rebels fighting against the establishment.
It's a weird phenomenon I've noticed within the right of claiming the identity and language of oppressed and minority groups in order to subvert them and claim whatever political and cultural power they have for their own, despite they themselves still being the most politically powerful and culturally influential demographic by orders of magnitude.
People naturally rebel against institutions. To a degree, it's healthy. As you say, a certain form of liberalism is institutionalized.
At the same time, the reactionaries (the right) has highly strategic, effective messaging: As you say they portray themselves as the oppressed; white people in the US are oppressed! A recent poll by CBS or Pew supported that it was a widely held view, at least on the right.
Also, they use the same tactics very frequently, in lost of situations:
First, just follow basic military tactics and stay on the attack; always keep the initiative and remain inside the enemy's OODA loop; force them to respond and reorient rather than plan and attack. You can see their attacks are often completely absurd, but it doesn't matter - they stay on the attack, keep the initiative, force you to respond rather than do anything effective. And their supporters love it, even knowing it's lies - they are winning the fight ('owning the libs').
One way they do it is to find their own biggest weakness (e.g., racism) and accuse the other side of it. Not only does it follow the tactics above but it disorients the enemy, and it floods the public space with so much BS that you can't talk about the topic. Try talking about racism, for example.
You are right. "A certain form of liberalism is institutionalized," and that's enough of a machine for millions of Americans, Europeans, and Brazilians to "rage against," as it were without too much self-delusion. I feel like there's a much wider world out there—especially given all historical context—which dwarfs today's liberal movement a thousandfold, but of course some people can't see the forest for this tree. Some people's Overton Windows are more like Overton peepholes. Can't say for sure I ain't such a person, myself.
Absolutely absurd to think of as fundamentally "woke" a government under the sway of the Heritage and Hoover Foundations, or the Cato and American Enterprise Institutes.
"Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics. People added that later on, although often young people get into politics just an excuse to get into fights.
As for "-punk" media genres, cyberpunk is but I felt like the term came from "steampunk", which is anti-political. I mean, it's basically about playacting Victorian colonialism and ignoring the bad parts.
> "Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics.
This seems like a very narrow view: the war on drugs, offshoring jobs or otherwise hammering working class employment, and, of course, rights for anyone who wasn’t a straight white dude were kind of prominent - an awful lot of punks were vocal about full rights for women, ending gay bashing, ending police brutality, etc.
> "Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics.
This is a strongly political position to hold. DIY aesthetics, too, deeply political. Not in the "electoral politics" sense, of course, but in terms of a country's distribution of power and determination of civic priorities.
How does it "require too much information" for a writer to have knowledge of their own culture?
No one is putting a gun to "ethnic writers'" heads and making requirements of them, or forcing them to "represent", all that's happening here is that more non-Anglo authors are choosing to write science fiction from other than the default cultural perspective of the genre, and more publishers are publishing it. I don't understand what your objection is.
> But I just think it's getting ridiculous that we're expecting new and upcoming writers to be able to do all of these things in order to fit into possible niche genres that generate little to no profit.
Who, pray tell, is "expecting" writers to do this? We're living in the digital content-driven death of monoculture, there's a Cambrian explosion of subgenres and niches out there in the literary world. Writers can write what they want to. There's room for both niche sci-fi such as these works, and a title with more mass appeal, such as Mexican Gothic. Book websites such as this are just as happy to populate SEO listicles full of affiliate links to advertise these works. Not to mention, it would appear that the YA market is bigger than ever, and there's much overlap with ethnic writers. And then there's the infinite demand (now with higher interest rates, perhaps less so) from streaming services for new works to adapt. There's been multiple times I've looked up something from a list of, say, AAPI sci-fi/fantasy novels that I've never heard of, only to find out adaptations are being worked on for them. (examples include Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, The Poppy War by R.F. Huang, and Jade City by Fonda Lee).
Who are you to suggest that the authors behind these works are doing it out of some misprioritization of what the market is looking for? As far as the literary world is concerned, it would seem like it's looking for everything.
This doesn't really feel that surprising when the vast majority of Tinder's users can be better described as predatory in nature rather than building up real emotional connections Tinder and all online dating apps have essentially become the adult friend finder which was never popular to begin with.
Edit: The person who wrote this article has no background at all in Food Safety, nor should they really be talking about this subject so lightly. Honestly, this article is dangerous to even really promote in the way its written. They lightly jester at that idea that a 1% fatality rate is an extremely rare occurrence and suggests that brains should be consumed in higher amounts. At first I thought this was satire but this advice is just genuinely harmful.